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Azure OpenAI vs IBM Watson Machine Learning comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure OpenAI
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Watson Machine Learning
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Azure OpenAI is 9.4%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Machine Learning is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure OpenAI9.4%
IBM Watson Machine Learning2.1%
Other88.5%
AI Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Rafael Keller - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates effective scheduling agents with responsive AI capabilities
I am using it to create agents to schedule appointments for clinics and professionals in general. It serves both small and major companies. The primary use case involves creating agents Its ability to understand and respond well to queries, including language translation for clients, is…
Anurag Mayank - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly efficient solution that delivers the desired results to its users
I had not considered how the solution could be improved because I was focused on how it was helping me to solve my issues. If I consider how we want to use it in our organization, certain areas of improvement can be addressed. For instance, we want to use it with Generative AI, not like ChatGPT, but in a way intended for industrial use. It would be beneficial to incorporate more AI into the solution.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"OpenAI integrates seamlessly with the broader Microsoft Azure ecosystem, and that provides synergies with the other solutions. This integration makes it much easier to build solutions."
"Two aspects I appreciate are the turnaround time and ease of use. As it's a managed service, the quick turnaround is beneficial, and the simple interface makes it easy to work with. Performance and scalability are also strong points since you can scale as needed."
"The high precision of information extraction is the most valuable feature."
"OpenAI's models are more mature than Watson's. They offer a wider range of features and provide richer outputs."
"The most valuable feature of Azure OpenAI stems from the GPT-3.5 models it provides to its users."
"Its ability to understand and respond well to queries, including language translation for clients, is beneficial."
"Azure OpenAI is useful for benchmarking products."
"The solution has a very drag-and-drop environment. Instead of coding something from scratch or understanding any concept in extensive depth before deployment, this is good. Plus, they have an auto dataset, which means you can choose any dataset they have instead of providing your own. So that's also pretty nice."
"It is has a lot of good features and we find the image classification very useful."
"It has improved self-service and customer satisfaction."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution's the cost and human labor savings."
"The solution is very valuable to our organization due to the fact that we can work on it as a workflow."
"We can enable and change developer productivity with artificial intelligence-recommended code based on natural language input or exciting source code."
"I was particularly interested in trying the AutoML feature to see how it handles data and proposes new models. The variety of models it provides is impressive."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"Azure OpenAI is not available in all regions, and its technical support should be improved."
"I have found the tool unreliable in certain use cases. I aim to enhance the system's latency, particularly in responding to calls. Occasionally, calls don't respond, so I want to improve reliability."
"We encountered challenges related to question understanding."
"The UI could be a little easier."
"Azure OpenAI should use more specific sources like academic articles because sometimes the source can't be found."
"Azure OpenAI is not an optimized tool yet, making it one of its shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Azure could significantly benefit from including more LLM models apart from OpenAI, as I often need to switch clouds when a model doesn't meet my requirements."
"One major drawback of Azure OpenAI is its availability, as it's not consistently accessible for effective use."
"In future releases, I would like to see a more flexible environment."
"The supporting language is limited."
"Honestly, I haven't seen any comparative report that has run the same data through two different artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities to get something out of it. I would love to see that."
"If I consider how we want to use it in our organization, certain areas of improvement can be addressed. For instance, we want to use it with Generative AI, not like ChatGPT, but in a way intended for industrial use."
"They should add more GPU processing power to improve performance, especially when dealing with large amounts of data."
"Sometimes training the model is difficult."
"Scaling is limited in some use cases. They need to make it easier to expand in all aspects."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm uncertain about the licensing, specifically the pricing. This falls under the purview of other teams, particularly the sales teams. I am not informed about the pricing details."
"The cost is quite high and fixed."
"We started with monthly payments, but we plan to switch to yearly billing once we've stabilized our solution."
"The solution's pricing depends on the services you will deploy."
"The pricing is acceptable, and it's delivering good value for the results and outcomes we need."
"The cost is pretty high. Even by US standards, you would find it high."
"The licensing is interaction-based, meaning transactional. It's reasonably priced for now."
"Cost-wise, the product's price is a bit on the higher side."
"I've only been using the free tier, but it's quite competitive on a service basis."
"The pricing model is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
University
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure OpenAI?
The product is easy to integrate with our IT workflow.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure OpenAI?
In terms of pricing for Azure OpenAI, I would rate it as average compared to Gemini. Currently, Gemini is becoming increasingly popular, which prompts leadership to consider a switch primarily due ...
What needs improvement with Azure OpenAI?
While it is good, we sometimes encounter hallucination issues, which is a significant concern. We are changing the prompt and fine-tuning it, but we still face some inconsistent behavior. We have s...
What do you like most about IBM Watson Machine Learning?
I was particularly interested in trying the AutoML feature to see how it handles data and proposes new models. The variety of models it provides is impressive.
What needs improvement with IBM Watson Machine Learning?
Sometimes training the model is difficult. We need to have at least a few different components to evaluate and understand the behavior of different users to have a very, very high accuracy in the m...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure OpenAI vs. IBM Watson Machine Learning and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.